Looking Back on College Life with No Regrets

O-S-U! OREGON STATE, FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT!

Ahh, the beloved college years. The four glorious years of pretending to grow up that are actually spent sleeping in, partying, going to football games, and learning (I think).

In case you didn't know, I went to Oregon State University — not Cornell, not Yale, not Georgetown, Oregon State, home of the Beavers. The quaint, West Coast, public university swarming with years of tradition, brick buildings, and the ever strong smell of cow pies. I'm not a rocket scientist or a Computer Science engineer either (shocker, I know), I'm just a blonde with a state school degree and big dreams of working in sports.

I enjoyed college. Looking back, there aren't too many things I would have changed, and I think that's the idea. Move out of your parents' house, figure out how to pay rent, learn to cook (kinda), and do everything you want to do on your own terms. You try all kinds of new things in a safe environment. You have successes and failures, it's great. Experiment while you can.

Oregon State was a great place to go to school. Set in the small town of Corvallis, there isn't much there besides the school itself. Ten months out of the year the streets are bustling with students on caffeine benders with bedhead, speed walking in the rain. You went to class on most days, finished papers in the morning and Facebook-ed through the afternoon.

OSU vs. UCLA 2009, photo credit Maria Bruggere

Classes were mostly boring, but my favorite part of the academic college process was the practicum credits I got from working at the school newspaper, The Daily Barometer. I started as a sports writer and eventually took over as the sports editor (I even got my own office). I had access to everything sports and loved it. Writing, interviewing, and attending games gave me great experience and insight into the world of college athletics and journalism. However, therein lies the one thing I do regret about college — quitting the paper.

I shouldn't have let the burnout and stress take over and untimately talk me into quitting. I shouldn't have let my nightmare of a living situation get me down, but I did, and learned one of the biggest lessons of my 20's so far — don't quit something you like doing.

After I quit the paper I was bored. I had nothing to do and I didn't like writing research papers and studying for tests enough to get straight A's. Hell, I got better grades when I was working 30 hours a week at the paper on top of full-time school. Clearly, I do well when I'm busy.

The following fall, after returning from study abroad in Costa Rica, I worked part-time at the OSU bookstore selling school supplies — seriously. I sold pencils, notebooks, rulers, you name it.  Long story short, that job lasted less than six months and it was painfully boring. I quit that job with zero regrets.

However, my bookstore chapter overlapped with football season, which for me meant the most exciting time of the year. I made sure I had time off to go to all the home games and cheer on all the guys I'd been friends with for nearly four years and writing about for the last year. There was no way I was giving that up for pencils and .05 lead.

The previous two years the Beavers had been in the running for the Rose Bowl game in Pasadena, CA, and although we had gotten off to a rough start, I thought maybe we had the team that would get us back into that situation. There was a lot of hype, I loved it, and I wanted to do something with it.

I had just gone to see The Social Network, the film about the creation of Facebook, when I became inspired to start a project of my own. I thought the University could use in help in creating more team spirit around the football team. That night I came up with "We Will Chomp You."

Corny? Yes. But hey, I wanted to do something that would not only benefit me, but also the team and the athletic department. Not to mention after seeing what the University of Oregon did with "I Love My Ducks," I figured Oregon State would welcome the idea that a student wanted to reciprocate, it's great marketing, and who's going to turn down a student?

Beavers have big teeth, they cut down wood, they chomp. It's a wrap.

So I had a mock up of the design made for the T-shirts, grabbed a close girlfriend (also the starting quarterback's girlfriend), and went to work. Initially, we had 60 shirts printed up with "We Will Chomp You" on the front in block letters and the OS logo on the back.

In less than 24 hours we sold all 60 shirts. We also got slapped on the wrist for using the OS logo without going through the royalty department, so we took that off for the second round of shirts.

Joe Newton wearing the Chomp shirt at the OSU/Arizona game in 2010.

One hundred more shirts were printed in the second batch, and we went into business with a friend of a friend who said he would make us a "We Will Chomp You" song to go with the shirts and eventually a music video. The song turned out decent, but wasn't exactly what I was hoping for. That's when things got weird and the truth behind the music production came out.

I got an email from the guy who had actually created the song – the "friend's" cousin, and not a student. He had his own studio setup and everything, but he was also the main vocal on the song. I had originally been told that the first guy we were dealing with was the vocal. So as it turns out, the guy we had originally told to create the song didn't create anything, he was just the messenger of lyric requests, which they also got wrong.

I met with the real songwriter, adjusted the song a little, and went to work on the video. The song ended up being called, "We'll Chomp You Up," but it had original music and lyrics so I ran with it. They did the song for free and I promised them I would try to turn it into something, so I didn't have much choice. Ultimately, the song wasn't made by a student, but I thought if I pulled it off in the end it wouldn't matter.

Meanwhile, my girlfriend and I were selling shirts like hotcakes. Guys on the team were buying them and so were our families. We had orders coming in from all over campus, so it was time to start pulling it all together. I had plans for putting the shirts in the video and getting the athletics marketing department, marching band, Benny the Beaver, and more to help bring my vision to life. I wanted nothing more than to show Oregon that students at Oregon State could create something worthwhile.

Because we had gotten so much positive feedback from everyone so far, I took the T-shirts to the bookstore and pitched the them to the clothing department manager. Intrigued at first, he said he'd take it to his boss and get back to me with an answer. I was stoked and ready to do the deal with the bookstore just to get more people aware of what I was trying to do.

A week later the clothing department got back to me with a firm pass on the T-shirts. They told me they had already purchased too much merchandise for the year and couldn't afford to take anything else on. I understood and politely moved on, continuing to sell shirts on the street corner before games, but something weird with the bookstore happened several days later.

While on my break one day, I was walking through the store looking at the clothing when I came across a black women's T-shirt with orange block letters that read "We Will Rock You."

Seriously?

I laughed out loud and thought to myself, "You gotta be kidding me!" Genuinely irritated now, I grabbed the shirt, marched over to the clothing department office, walked in and said, "Got a minute?" and held up the shirt, anxiously awaiting an explanation.

"It was a coincidence, we had purchased the shirt in June or July, it had nothing to do with your idea."

Right. So you've had the shirt since probably August, it's now October, and you're just putting it out? I call BS on that one, guys. Nice try.

I know the bookstore isn't technically part of the University, they just rent space in the Memorial Union, but come on, support a student with an idea.  Not to mention the store was only going to put out 30 shirts to start with, and it would have cost them hardly anything. Support some gumption and determination to do something positive for the University.

When it came to doing the video, the marketing department tried to shut down as much as possible. The band couldn't participate, I wasn't allowed to put the mascot on camera, so I was slowly watching the anticlimactic climax of my project.

"WE'LL CHOMP YOU UP"

Video by Maria Bruggere

Music and lyrics by Traumatize the Tan Superman featuring Doug Law

The video ended up being a compilation of game and fan footage which I edited in sync with the song and posted on YouTube. It's got a couple thousand views and is lackluster compared to everything I had hoped for. I even still have shirts for sale, we didn't end up selling all of the second batch.

I wouldn't say this project was a regret, but I do wish I had thought of it all well in advance of football season, things would have made more sense. On the other hand, the Beavers didn't end up having the season we were all hoping for, so in the end, it all worked out the way it was supposed to.

I'm a Beaver until the day I die, don't get me wrong. I love my University, but I hope in the future the school gets behind student projects and experiments with something new.

Yet another lesson I learned in my 20's: planning is everything.